A Century of Negro Migration
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Title: A Century of Negro Migration
Author: Carter G. Woodson
Release Date: February 6, 2004 [EBook #10968]
Language: English
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A CENTURY OF NEGRO MIGRATION
Carter G. Woodson
TO MY FATHER
JAMES WOODSON
WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO ENTER THE LITERARY WORLD
A CENTURY OF NEGRO MIGRATION
PREFACE
In treating this movement of the Negroes, the writer does not presume to say the last word on the subject. The
exodus of the Negroes from the South has just begun. The blacks have recently realized that they have
freedom of body and they will now proceed to exercise that right. To presume, therefore, to exhaust the
treatment of this movement in its incipiency is far from the intention of the writer. The aim here is rather to
direct attention to this new phase of Negro American life which will doubtless prove to be the most significant
event in our local history since the Civil War.
Many of the facts herein set forth have seen light before. The effort here is directed toward an original
treatment of facts, many of which have already periodically appeared in some form. As these works, however,
are too numerous to be consulted by the layman, the writer has endeavored to present in succinct form the
leading facts as to how the Negroes in the United States have struggled under adverse circumstances to flee
from bondage and oppression in quest of a land offering asylum to the oppressed and opportunity to the

fact, to justify this conclusion, we need but give passing mention here to developments too well known to be
CHAPTER I 2
discussed in detail. Slavery in the original thirteen States was the normal condition of the Negroes. When,
however, James Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson began to discuss the natural rights of the colonists,
then said to be oppressed by Great Britain, some of the patriots of the Revolution carried their reasoning to its
logical conclusion, contending that the Negro slaves should be freed on the same grounds, as their rights were
also founded in the laws of nature.[1] And so it was soon done in most Northern commonwealths.
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts exterminated the institution by constitutional provision and
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania by gradual emancipation acts.[2] And it
was thought that the institution would soon thereafter pass away even in all southern commonwealths except
South Carolina and Georgia, where it had seemingly become profitable. There came later the industrial
revolution following the invention of Watt's steam engine and mechanical appliances like Whitney's cotton
gin, all which changed the economic aspect of the modern world, making slavery an institution offering means
of exploitation to those engaged in the production of cotton. This revolution rendered necessary a large supply
of cheap labor for cotton culture, out of which the plantation system grew. The Negro slaves, therefore, lost all
hope of ever winning their freedom in South Carolina and Georgia; and in Maryland, Virginia, and North
Carolina, where the sentiment in favor of abolition had been favorable, there was a decided reaction which
soon blighted their hopes.[3] In the Northern commonwealths, however, the sentiment in behalf of universal
freedom, though at times dormant, was ever apparent despite the attachment to the South of the trading classes
of northern cities, which profited by the slave trade and their commerce with the slaveholding States. The
Northern States maintaining this liberal attitude developed, therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes who
were oppressed in the South.
The Negroes, however, were not generally welcomed in the North. Many of the northerners who sympathized
with the oppressed blacks in the South never dreamt of having them as their neighbors. There were,
consequently, always two classes of anti-slavery people, those who advocated the abolition of slavery to
elevate the blacks to the dignity of citizenship, and those who merely hoped to exterminate the institution
because it was an economic evil.[4] The latter generally believed that the blacks constituted an inferior class
that could not discharge the duties of citizenship, and when the proposal to incorporate the blacks into the
body politic was clearly presented to these agitators their anti-slavery ardor was decidedly dampened.
Unwilling, however, to take the position that a race should be doomed because of personal objections, many

Louisiana, Philip Francis Renault imported 500 other bondsmen into Upper Louisiana or what was later
included in the Northwest Territory. Slavery then became more and more extensive until by 1750 there were
along the Mississippi five settlements of slaves, Kaskaskia, Kaokia, Fort Chartres, St. Phillipe and Prairie du
Rocher.[10] In 1763 Negroes were relatively numerous in the Northwest Territory but when this section that
year was transferred to the British the number was diminished by the action of those Frenchmen who,
unwilling to become subjects of Great Britain, moved from the territory.[11] There was no material increase
in the slave population thereafter until the end of the eighteenth century when some Negroes came from the
original thirteen.
The Ordinance of 1787 did not disturb the relation of slave and master. Some pioneers thought that the sixth
article exterminated slavery there; others contended that it did not. The latter believed that such expressions in
the Ordinance of 1787 as the "free inhabitants" and the "free male inhabitants of full size" implied the
continuance of slavery and others found ground for its perpetuation in that clause of the Ordinance which
allowed the people of the territory to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of the thirteen States.
Students of law saw protection for slavery in Jay's treaty which guaranteed to the settlers their property of all
kinds.[12] When, therefore, the slave question came up in the Northwest Territory about the close of the
eighteenth century, there were three classes of slaves: first, those who were in servitude to French owners
previous to the cession of the Territory to England and were still claimed as property in the possession of
which the owners were protected under the treaty of 1763; second, those who were held by British owners at
the time of Jay's treaty and claimed afterward as property under its protection; and third, those who, since the
Territory had been controlled by the United States, had been brought from the commonwealths in which
slavery was allowed.[13] Freedom, however, was recognized as the ultimate status of the Negro in that
territory.
This question having been seemingly settled, Anthony Benezet, who for years advocated the abolition of
slavery and devoted his time and means to the preparation of the Negroes for living as freedmen, was practical
enough to recommend to the Congress of the Confederation a plan of colonizing the emancipated blacks on
the western lands.[14] Jefferson incorporated into his scheme for a modern system of public schools the
training of the slaves in industrial and agricultural branches to equip them for a higher station in life. He
believed, however, that the blacks not being equal to the white race should not be assimilated and should they
be free, they should, by all means, be colonized afar off.[15] Thinking that the western lands might be so used,
he said in writing to James Monroe in 1801: "A very great extent of country north of the Ohio has been laid

adventure to brave the wilderness through which they had to go. Negroes even then had the idea that there was
in this country a place of more privilege than those they enjoyed in the seaboard colonies. Knowing of the
likelihood of the Negroes to rise during the French and Indian War, Governor Dinwiddie wrote Fox one of the
Secretaries of State in 1756: "We dare not venture to part with any of our white men any distance, as we must
have a watchful eye over our Negro slaves, who are upward of one hundred thousand."[22] Brissot de
Warville mentions in his _Travels of 1788_ several examples of marriages of white and blacks in Pittsburgh.
He noted the case of a Negro who married an indentured French servant woman. Out of this union came a
desirable mulatto girl who married a surgeon of Nantes then stationed at Pittsburgh. His family was
considered one of the most respectable of the city. The Negro referred to was doing a creditable business and
his wife took it upon herself to welcome foreigners, especially the French, who came that way. Along the
Ohio also there were several cases of women of color living with unmarried white men; but this was looked
upon by the Negroes as detestable as was evidenced by the fact that, if black women had a quarrel with a
mulatto woman, the former would reproach the latter for being of ignoble blood.[23]
These tendencies, however, could not assure the Negro that the Northwest Territory was to be an asylum for
freedom when in 1763 it passed into the hands of the British, the promoters of the slave trade, and later to the
independent colonies, two of which had no desire to exterminate slavery. Furthermore, when the Ordinance of
1787 with its famous sixth article against slavery was proclaimed, it was soon discovered that this document
was not necessarily emancipatory. As the right to hold slaves was guaranteed to those who owned them prior
to the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, it was to be expected that those attached to that institution would not
indifferently see it pass away. Various petitions, therefore, were sent to the territorial legislature and to
Congress praying that the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787 be abrogated.[24] No formal action to this
effect was taken, but the practice of slavery was continued even at the winking of the government. Some
slaves came from the Canadians who, in accordance with the slave trade laws of the British Empire, were
supplied with bondsmen. It was the Canadians themselves who provided by act of parliament in 1793 for
prohibiting the importation of slaves and for gradual emancipation. When it seemed later that the cause of
freedom would eventually triumph the proslavery element undertook to perpetuate slavery through a system
of indentured servant labor.
In the formation of the States of Indiana and Illinois the question as to what should be done to harmonize with
CHAPTER I 5
the new constitution the system of indenture to which the territorial legislatures had been committed, caused

[Footnote 6: Ford edition, _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 432.]
[Footnote 7: For the passage of this ordinance three reasons have been given: Slavery then prior to the
invention of the cotton gin was considered a necessary evil in the South. The expected monopoly of the
tobacco and indigo cultivation in the South would be promoted by excluding Negroes from the Northwest
Territory and thus preventing its cultivation there. Dr. Cutler's influence aided by Mr. Grayson of Virginia
was of much assistance. The philanthropic idea was not so prominent as men have thought Dunn, _Indiana_,
p. 212.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., p. 254.]
[Footnote 9: Code Noir.]
[Footnote 10: Speaking of these settlements in 1750, M. Viner, a Jesuit Missionary to the Indians, said: "We
CHAPTER I 6
have here Whites, Negroes, and Indians, to say nothing of cross-breeds There are five French villages and
three villages of the natives within a space of twenty-one leagues In the five French villages there are
perhaps eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and some sixty red slaves or savages." Unlike the
condition of the slaves in Lower Louisiana where the rigid enforcement of the Slave Code made their lives
almost intolerable, the slaves of the Northwest Territory were for many reasons much more fortunate. In the
first place, subject to the control of a mayor-commandant appointed by the Governor of New Orleans, the
early dwellers in this territory managed their plantations about as they pleased. Moreover, as there were few
planters who owned as many as three or four Negroes, slavery in the Northwest Territory did not get far
beyond the patriarchal stage. Slaves were usually well fed. The relations between master and slave were
friendly. The bondsmen were allowed special privileges on Sundays and holidays and their children were
taught the catechism according to the ordinance of Louis XIV in 1724, which provided that all masters should
educate their slaves in the Apostolic Catholic religion and have them baptized. Male slaves were worked side
by side in the fields with their masters and the female slaves in neat attire went with their mistresses to matins
and vespers. Slaves freely mingled in practically all festive enjoyments See _Jesuit Relations_, LXIX, p.
144; Hutchins, _An Historical Narrative_, 1784; and Code Noir.]
[Footnote 11: Mention was thereafter made of slaves as in the case of Captain Philip Pittman who in 1770
wrote of one Mr. Beauvais, "who owned 240 orpens of cultivated land and eighty slaves; and such a case as
that of a Captain of a militia at St. Philips, possessing twenty blacks; and the case of Mr. Bales, a very rich
man of St. Genevieve, Illinois, owning a hundred Negroes, beside having white people constantly

be whipped. In this frontier section, therefore, where men often took the law in their own hands, slaves were
often punished and abused just as they were in the Southern States. The law dealing with fugitives was
somewhat harsh. When apprehended, fugitives had to serve two days extra for each day they lost from their
master's service. The harboring of a runaway slave was punishable by a fine of one day for each the slave
might be concealed. Consistently too with the provision of the laws in most slave States, slaves could retain
all goods or money lawfully acquired during their servitude provided their master gave his consent. Upon the
demonstration of proof to the county court that they had served their term they could obtain from that tribunal
certificates of freedom. See The Laws of Indiana.]
[Footnote 26: Masters had to provide adequate food, and clothing and good lodging for the slave, but the
penalty for failing to comply with this law was not clear and even if so, it happened that many masters never
observed it. There was also an effort to prevent cruelty to slaves, but it was difficult to establish the guilt of
masters when the slave could not bear witness against his owner and it was not likely that the neighbor
equally guilty or indifferent to the complaints of the blacks would take their petitions to court.
Under this system a large number of slaves were brought into the Territory especially after 1807. There were
135 in 1800. This increase came from Kentucky and Tennessee. As those brought were largely boys and girls
with a long period of service, this form of slavery was assured for some years. The children of these blacks
were often registered for thirty-five instead of thirty years of service on the ground that they were not born in
Illinois. No one thought of persecuting a master for holding servants unlawfully and Negroes themselves
could be easily deceived. Very few settlers brought their slaves there to free them. There were only 749 in
1820. If one considers the proportion of this to the number brought there for manumission this seems hardly
true. It is better to say that during these first two decades of the nineteenth century some settlers came for both
purposes, some to hold slaves, some, as Edward Coles, to free them. It was not only practiced in the southern
part along the Mississippi and Ohio but as far north in Illinois as Sangamon County, were found servants
known as "yellow boys" and "colored girls." See the Laws of Illinois.]
CHAPTER II
A TRANSPLANTATION TO THE NORTH
Just after the settlement of the question of holding the western posts by the British and the adjustment of the
trouble arising from their capture of slaves during our second war with England, there started a movement of
the blacks to this frontier territory. But, as there were few towns or cities in the Northwest during the first
decades of the new republic, the flight of the Negro into that territory was like that of a fugitive taking his

When the manumission of the slaves was checked by the reaction against that class and it became more of a
problem to establish them in a hostile environment, certain Quakers of North Carolina and Virginia adopted
the scheme of settling them in Northern States.[6] At first, they sent such freedmen to Pennsylvania. But for
various reasons this did not prove to be the best asylum. In the first place, Pennsylvania bordered on the slave
States, Maryland and Virginia, from which agents came to kidnap free Negroes. Furthermore, too many
Negroes were already rushing to that commonwealth as the Negroes' heaven and there was the chance that the
Negroes might be settled elsewhere in the North, where they might have better economic opportunities.[7] A
committee of forty was accordingly appointed by North Carolina Quakers in 1822 to examine the laws of
other free States with a view to determining what section would be most suitable for colonizing these blacks.
This committee recommended in its report that the blacks be colonized in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
The yearly meeting, therefore, ordered the removal of such Negroes as fast as they were willing or as might be
consistent with the profession of their sect, and instructed the agents effecting the removal to draw on the
treasury for any sum not exceeding two hundred dollars to defray expenses. An increasing number reached
these States every year but, owing to the inducements offered by the American Colonization Society, some of
them went to Liberia. When Liberia, however, developed into every thing but a haven of rest, the number sent
to the settlements in the Northwest greatly increased.
The quarterly meeting succeeded in sending to the West 133 Negroes, including 23 free blacks and slaves
given up because they were connected by marriage with those to be transplanted.[8] The Negro colonists
seemed to prefer Indiana.[9] They went in three companies and with suitable young Friends to whom were
executed powers of attorney to manumit, set free, settle and bind them out.[10] Thirteen carts and wagons
were bought for these three companies; $1,250 was furnished for their traveling expenses and clothing, the
whole cost amounting to $2,490. It was planned to send forty or fifty to Long Island and twenty to the interior
CHAPTER II 9
of Pennsylvania, but they failed to prosper and reports concerning them stamped them as destitute and
deplorably ignorant. Those who went to Ohio and Indiana, however, did well.[11]
Later we receive another interesting account of this exodus. David White led a company of fifty-three into the
West, thirty-eight of whom belonged to Friends, five to a member who had ordered that they be taken West at
his expense. Six of these slaves belonged to Samuel Lawrence, a Negro slaveholder, who had purchased
himself and family. White pathetically reports the case of four of the women who had married slave husbands
and had twenty children for the possession of whom the Friends had to stand a lawsuit in the courts. The

nineteenth century. In the winter of 1833-4, he providentially became acquainted with the colored people of
Cincinnati, finding there about "4,000 totally ignorant of every thing calculated to make good citizens." As
most of them had been slaves, excluded from every avenue of moral and mental improvement, he established
for them a school which he maintained for two years. He then proposed to these Negroes to go into the
country and purchase land to remove them "from those contaminating influences which had so long crushed
them in our cities and villages."[18] They consented on the condition that he would accompany them and
teach school. He travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana, looking for a suitable location, and finally
selected for settlement a place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made the first purchase of land there for
this purpose and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about 30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this
benefactor, who had travelled into almost every neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid before them
the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for their children.[19]
CHAPTER II 10
This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of John Harper of North Carolina.[20]
John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to establish his slaves as freemen in this county but the Germans who
had settled in that community a little ahead of them started such a disturbance that Randolph's executor could
not carry out his plan, although he had purchased a large tract of land there.[21] It was necessary to send these
freemen to Miami County. Theodoric H. Gregg of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, liberated his slaves in 1854
and sent them to Ohio.[22] Nearer to the Civil War, when public opinion was proscribing the uplift of
Negroes in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for
sixteen of his former bondsmen in 1856.[23] Other freedmen found their way to this community in later years
and it became so prosperous that it was selected as the site of Wilberforce University.
This transplantation extended into Michigan. With the help of persons philanthropically inclined there sprang
up a flourishing group of Negroes in Detroit. Early in the nineteenth century they began to acquire property
and to provide for the education of their children. Their record was such as to merit the encomiums of their
fellow white citizens. In later years this group in Detroit was increased by the operation of laws hostile to free
Negroes in the South in that life for this class not only became intolerable but necessitated their expatriation.
Because of the Virginia drastic laws and especially that of 1838 prohibiting the return to that State of such
Negro students as had been accustomed to go North to attend school, after they were denied this privilege at
home, the father of Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louis More, the mother of Fannie M. Richards, led a
colony of free Negroes from Fredericksburg to Detroit.[24] And for about similar reasons the father of Robert

Appalachian highland, extending like a peninsula into the South, had a natural endowment which produced a
class of white citizens hostile to the institution of slavery. These mountaineers coming later to the colonies
had to go to the hills and mountains because the first comers from Europe had taken up the land near the sea.
Being of the German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, they had ideals differing widely from those of the
seaboard slaveholders.[31] The mountaineers believed in "civil liberty in fee simple, and an open road to civil
honors, secured to the poorest and feeblest members of society." The eastern element had for their ideal a
government of interests for the people. They believed in liberty but that of kings, lords, and commons, not of
all the people.[32]
Settled along the Appalachian highland, these new stocks continued to differ from those dwelling near the sea,
especially on the slavery question.[33] The natural endowment of the mountainous section made slavery there
unprofitable and the mountaineers bore it grievously that they were attached to commonwealths dominated by
the radical pro-slavery element of the South, who sacrificed all other interests to safeguard those of the
peculiar institution. There developed a number of clashes in all of the legislatures and constitutional
conventions of the Southern States along the Atlantic, but in every case the defenders of the interests of
slavery won. When, therefore, slaves with the assistance of anti-slavery mountaineers began to escape to the
free States, they had little difficulty in making their way through the Appalachian region, where the love of
freedom had so set the people against slavery that although some of them yielded to the inevitable sin, they
never made any systematic effort to protect it.[34]
The development of the movement in these mountains was more than interesting. During the first quarter of
the nineteenth century there were many ardent anti-slavery leaders in the mountains. These were not
particularly interested in the Negro but were determined to keep that soil for freedom that the settlers might
there realize the ideals for which they had left their homes in Europe. When the industrial revolution with the
attendant rise of the plantation cotton culture made abolition in the South improbable, some of them became
colonizationists, hoping to destroy the institution through deportation, which would remove the objection of
certain masters who would free their slaves provided they were not left in the States to become a public
charge.[35] Some of this sentiment continued in the mountains even until the Civil War. The highlanders,
therefore, found themselves involved in a continuous embroglio because they were not moved by reactionary
influences which were unifying the South for its bold effort to make slavery a national institution.[36] The
other members of the mountaineer anti-slavery group became attached to the Underground Railroad system,
endeavoring by secret methods to place on free soil a sufficiently large number of fugitives to show a decided

Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham,
Riley, Anderton, London, Malden and Gonfield.[42] And their coming to Canada was not checked even by
request from their enemies that they be turned away from that country as undesirables, for some of the white
people there welcomed and assisted them. Canadians later experienced a change in their attitude toward these
refugees but these British Americans never made the life of the Negro there so intolerable as was the case in
some of the free States.
It should be observed here that this movement, unlike the exodus of the Negroes of today, affected an unequal
distribution of the enlightened Negroes.[43] Those who are fleeing from the South today are largely laborers
seeking economic opportunities. The motive at work in the mind of the antebellum refugee was higher. In
1840 there were more intelligent blacks in the South than in the North but not so after 1850, despite the
vigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in some parts of the North. While the free Negro population of
the slave States increased only 23,736 from 1850 to 1860, that of the free States increased 29,839. In the
South, only Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the number of free
persons of color during the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. This element of the population had
only slightly increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina and
the District of Columbia. The number of free Negroes of Florida remained constant. Those of Arkansas,
Mississippi and Texas diminished. In the North, of course, the migration had caused the tendency to be in the
other direction. With the exception of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York which had about the
same free colored population in 1860 as they had in 1850 there was a general increase in the number of
Negroes in the free States. Ohio led in this respect, having had during this period an increase of 11,394.[44] A
glance at the table on the accompanying page will show in detail the results of this migration.
STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES
State Population 1850 1860 Alabama 2,265 2,690
Arkansas 608 144 California 962 4,086 Connecticut 7,693 8,627
Delaware 18,073 19,829 Florida 932 932 Georgia 2,931 3,500
Illinois 5,436 7,628 Indiana 11,262 11,428 Iowa 333 1,069
Kentucky 10,011 10,684 Louisiana 17,462 18,647 Maine 1,356 1,327
Kansas 625 Maryland 74,723 83,942 Massachusetts 9,064 9,602
Michigan 2,583 6,797 Minnesota 259 Mississippi 930 773
Missouri 2,618 3,572 New Hampshire 520 494 New Jersey 23,810 25,318

colored boys. He had maintained a school on it, at his own expense, till the eleventh of November, 1842.
While in Philadelphia the winter before, he became acquainted with the trustees of the late Samuel Emlen, a
Friend of New Jersey. He left by his will $20,000 for the "support and education in school learning and the
mechanic arts and agriculture, boys, of African and Indian descent, whose parents would give them up to the
school. They united their means and purchased Wattles farm, and appointed him the superintendent of the
establishment, which they called the Emlen Institute." See Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 356.]
[Footnote 19: Howe's _Historical Collections_, p. 355.]
[Footnote 20: Manuscripts in the possession of J.E. Moorland.]
[Footnote 21: _The African Repository_, xxii, pp. 322, 333.]
CHAPTER II 14
[Footnote 22: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 723.]
[Footnote 23: _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, p. 158.]
[Footnote 24: _The Journal of Negro History_, I, pp. 23-33.]
[Footnote 25: Ibid., I, p. 26.]
[Footnote 26: _The African Repository_, passim.]
[Footnote 27: Although constituting a majority of the population even before the Civil War the Negroes of
this township did not get recognition in the local government until 1875 when John Allen, a Negro, was
elected township treasurer. From that time until about 1890 the Negroes always shared the honors of office
with their white citizens and since that time they have usually had entire control of the local government in
that township, holding such offices as supervisor, clerk, treasurer, road commissioner, and school director.
Their record has been that of efficiency. Boss rule among them is not known. The best man for an office is
generally sought; for this is a community of independent farmers. In 1907 one hundred and eleven different
farmers in this community had holdings of 10,439 acres. Their township usually has very few delinquent
taxpayers and it promptly makes its returns to the county See the _Southern Workman_, xxxvii, pp.
486-489.]
[Footnote 28: Davidson and Stowe, _A Complete History of Illinois_, pp. 321, 322; and Washburn, _Edward
Coles_, pp. 44 and 53.]
[Footnote 29: The Negro population of this town so rapidly increased after the war that it has become a Negro
town and unfortunately a bad one. Much improvement has been made in recent years See _Southern
Workman_, xxxvii, pp. 489-494.]

numbers as to make them constitute a rather important part in the community, however, some free States
enacted laws to restrict the privileges of the blacks.
Free Negroes had voted in all the colonies except Georgia and South Carolina, if they had the property
qualification; but after the sentiment attendant upon the struggle for the rights of man had passed away there
set in a reaction.[2] Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky disfranchised all Negroes not long after the
Revolution. They voted in North Carolina until 1835, when the State, feeling that this privilege of one class of
Negroes might affect the enslavement of the other, prohibited it. The Northern States, following in their wake,
set up the same barriers against the blacks. They were disfranchised in New Jersey in 1807, in Connecticut in
1814, and in Pennsylvania in 1838. In 1811 New York passed an act requiring the production of certificates of
freedom from blacks or mulattoes offering to vote. The second constitution, adopted in 1823, provided that no
man of color, unless he had been for three years a citizen of that State and for one year next preceding any
election, should be seized and possessed of a freehold estate, should be allowed to vote, although this
qualification was not required of the whites. An act of 1824 relating to the government of the Stockbridge
Indians provided that no Negro or mulatto should vote in their councils.[3]
That increasing prejudice was to a great extent the result of the immigration into the North of Negroes in the
rough, was nowhere better illustrated than in Pennsylvania. Prior to 1800, and especially after 1780, when the
State provided for gradual emancipation, there was little race prejudice in Pennsylvania.[4] When the
reactionary legislation of the South made life intolerable for the Negroes, debasing them to the plane of
beasts, many of the free people of color from Virginia, Maryland and Delaware moved or escaped into
Pennsylvania like a steady stream during the next sixty years. As these Negroes tended to concentrate in
towns and cities, they caused the supply of labor to exceed the demand, lowering the wages of some and
driving out of employment a number of others who became paupers and consequently criminals. There set in
too an intense struggle between the black and white laborers,[5] immensely accelerating the growth of race
prejudice, especially when the abolitionists and Quakers were giving Negroes industrial training.
The first exhibition of this prejudice was seen among the lower classes of white people, largely Irish and
Germans, who, devoted to menial labor, competed directly with the Negroes. It did not require a long time,
CHAPTER III 16
however, for this feeling to react on the higher classes of whites where Negroes settled in large groups. A
strong protest arose from the menace of Negro paupers. An attempt was made in 1804 to compel free Negroes
to maintain those that might become a public charge.[6] In 1813 the mayor, aldermen and citizens of

confined to large cities. The Philadelphia press said nothing in behalf of the race. It was generally thought that
freedom had not been an advantage to the Negro and that instead of making progress they had filled jails and
almshouses and multiplied pest holes to afflict the cities with disease and crime.
The Negroes of York carefully worked out in 1803 a plan to burn the city. Incendiaries set on fire a number of
houses, eleven of which were destroyed, whereas there were other attempts at a general destruction of the city.
The authorities arrested a number of Negroes but ran the risk of having the jail broken open by their
sympathizing fellowmen. After a reign of terror for half a week, order was restored and twenty of the accused
were convicted of arson.
In 1820 there occurred so many conflagrations that a vigilance committee was organized.[16] Whether or not
the Negroes were guilty of the crime is not known but numbers of them left either on account of the fear of
punishment or because of the indignities to which they were subjected. Numerous petitions, therefore, came
before the legislature to stop the immigration of Negroes. It was proposed in 1840 to tax all free Negroes to
assist them in getting out of the State for colonization.[17] The citizens of Lehigh County asked the
authorities in 1830 to expel all Negroes and persons of color found in the State.[18] Another petition prayed
CHAPTER III 17
that they be deprived of the freedom of movement. Bills embodying these ideas were frequently considered
but they were never passed.
Stronger opposition than this, however, was manifested in the form of actual outbreaks on a large scale in
Philadelphia. The immediate cause of this first real clash was the abolition agitation in the city in 1834
following the exciting news of other such disturbances a few months prior to this date in several northern
cities. A group of boys started the riot by destroying a Negro resort. A mob then proceeded to the Negro
district, where white and colored men engaged in a fight with clubs and stones.
The next day the mob ruined the African Presbyterian Church and attacked some Negroes, destroying their
property and beating them mercilessly. This riot continued for three days. A committee appointed to inquire
into the causes of the riot reported that the aim of the rioters had been to make the Negroes go away because it
was believed that their labor was depriving them of work and because the blacks had shielded criminals and
had made such noise and disorder in their churches as to make them a nuisance. It seemed that the most
intelligent and well-to-do people of Philadelphia keenly felt it that the city had thus been disgraced, but the
mob spirit continued.[19]
The very next year was marked by the same sort of disorder. Because a half-witted Negro attempted to murder

amusement and public conveyances and segregated in places of worship. In the draft riots which occurred
there in 1863, one of the aims of the mobs was to assassinate Negroes and to destroy their property. They
CHAPTER III 18
burned the Colored Orphan Asylum of that city and hanged Negroes to lamp-posts.
The situation in parts of New England was not much better. For fear of the evils of an increasing population of
free persons of color the people of Canaan, New Hampshire, broke up the Noyes Academy because it decided
to admit Negro students, thinking that many of the race might thereby be encouraged to come to that
State.[25] When Prudence Crandall established in Canterbury, Connecticut, an academy to which she decided
to admit Negroes, the mayor, selectmen and citizens of the city protested, and when their protests failed to
deter this heroine, they induced the legislature to enact a special law covering the case and invoked the
measure to have Prudence Crandall imprisoned because she would not desist.[26] This very law and the
arguments upholding it justified the drastic measure on the ground that an increase in the colored population
would be an injury to the people of that State.
In the new commonwealths formed out of western territory, there was the same fear as to Negro domination
and consequently there followed the wave of legislation intended in some cases not only to withhold from the
Negro settlers the exercise of the rights of citizenship but to discourage and even to prevent them from coming
into their territory.[27] The question as to what should be done with the Negro was early an issue in Ohio. It
came up in the constitutional convention of 1803, and provoked some discussion, but that body considered it
sufficient to settle the matter for the time being by merely leaving the Negroes, Indians and foreigners out of
the pale of the newly organized body politic by conveniently incorporating the word white throughout the
constitution.[28] It was soon evident, however, that the matter had not been settled, and the legislature of 1804
had to give serious consideration to the immigration of Negroes into that State. It was, therefore, enacted that
no Negro or mulatto should remain there permanently, unless he could furnish a certificate of freedom issued
by some court, that all Negroes in that commonwealth should be registered before the following June, and that
no man should employ a Negro who failed to comply with these conditions. Should one be detected in hiring,
harboring or hindering the capture of a fugitive black, he was liable to a fine of $50 and his master could
recover pay for the service of his slave to the amount of fifty cents a day.[29]
As this legislature did not meet the demands of those who desired further to discourage Negro immigration,
the Legislature of 1807 was induced to enact a law to the effect that no Negro should be permitted to settle in
Ohio, unless he could within 20 days give a bond to the amount of $500 for his good behavior and assurance

bondsmen were expected to provide for their maintenance, if they failed to support themselves. Failure to
comply with this law meant expulsion from the territory.[37]
The opposition to the Negroes immigrating into the new West was not restricted to the enactment of laws
which in some cases were never enforced. Several communities took the law into their own hands. During
these years when the Negroes were seeking freedom in the Northwest Territory and when free blacks were
being established there by philanthropists, it seemed to the southern uplanders fleeing from slavery in the
border States and foreigners seeking fortunes in the new world that they might possibly be crowded out of this
new territory by the Negroes. Frequent clashes, therefore, followed after they had passed through a period of
toleration and dependence on the execution of the hostile laws. The clashes of the greatest consequences
occurred in the Northwest Territory where a larger number of uplanders from the South had gone, some to
escape the ill effects of slavery, and others to hold slaves if possible, and when that seemed impossible, to
exclude the blacks altogether.[38] This persecution of the Negroes received also the hearty cooperation of the
foreign element, who, being an undeveloped class, had to do menial labor in competition with the blacks. The
feeling of the foreigners was especially mischievous for the reasons that they were, like the Negroes, at first
settled in large numbers in urban communities.
Generally speaking, the feeling was like that exhibited by the Germans in Mercer County, Ohio. The citizens
of this frontier community, in registering their protest against the settling of Negroes there, adopted the
following resolutions:
_Resolved_, That we will not live among Negroes, as we have settled here first, we have fully determined that
we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulattoes in this county to the full extent of our means, the bayonet
not excepted.
_Resolved_, That the blacks of this county be, and they are hereby respectfully requested to leave the county
on or before the first day of March, 1847; and in the case of their neglect or refusal to comply with this
request, we pledge ourselves to _remove them, peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must._
_Resolved_, That we who are here assembled, pledge ourselves not to employ or trade with any black or
mulatto person, in any manner whatever, or permit them to have any grinding done at our mills, after the first
day of January next.[39]
In 1827 there arose a storm of protest on the occasion of the settling of seventy freedmen in Lawrence County,
Ohio, by a philanthropic master of Pittsylvania County, Virginia.[40] On _Black Friday_, January 1, 1830,
eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the request of one or two hundred white citizens set

With the exception of such centers as Eden, Upper Alton, Bellville and Chicago, this antagonistic attitude was
general also in the State of Illinois. The Negroes were despised, abused and maltreated as persons who had no
rights that the white man should respect. Even in Detroit, Michigan, in 1833 a fracas was started by an attack
on Negroes. Because a courageous group of them had effected the rescue and escape of one Thornton
Blackburn and his wife who had been arrested by the sheriff as alleged fugitives from Kentucky, the citizens
invoked the law of 1827, to require free Negroes to produce a certificate and furnish bonds for their behavior
and support.[47] The anti-slavery sentiment there, however, was so strong that the law was not long rigidly
enforced.[48] And so it was in several other parts of the West which, however, were exceptional.[49]
[Footnote 1: _The New York Daily Advertiser,_ Sept. 22, 1800; _The New York Journal of Commerce,_ July
12, 1834; and _The New York Commercial Advertiser,_ July 12, 1834.]
[Footnote 2: Hart, _Slavery and Abolition,_ pp. 53, 82.]
[Footnote 3: Goodell, _American Slave Code,_
Part III, chap. i; Hurd,
_The Law of Freedom and Bondage,_ I, pp. 51, 61, 67, 81, 89, 101, 111; Woodson, _The Education of the
Negro Prior to 1861,_ pp. 151-178.]
[Footnote 4: Benezet, _Short Observations,_ p. 12.]
[Footnote 5: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 143-145.]
Part III, chap. i; Hurd, 21
[Footnote 6: _Journal of House_, 1823-24, p. 824.]
[Footnote 7: _Journal of House,_ 1812-1813, pp. 481, 482.]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, 1814-1815, p. 101.]
[Footnote 9: _United States Censuses_, 1790-1860.]
[Footnote 10: Brannagan, _Serious Remonstrances_, p. 68.]
[Footnote 11: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 145; _The Philadelphia Gazette_, June 30, 1819.]
[Footnote 12: _Democratic Press, Philadelphia Gazette_, Nov. 21, 1825.]
[Footnote 13: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 146.]
[Footnote 14: De Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_, II, pp. 292, 294.]
[Footnote 15: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 148.]
[Footnote 16: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.]
[Footnote 17: _African Repository,_ VIII, pp. 125, 283; _Journal of House_, 1840, I, pp. 347, 508, 614, 622,

the act to which this is an addition.
3. Any person not an inhabitant of this State who shall reside in any town therein for the purpose of being
instructed as aforesaid, shall be an admissible witness in all prosecutions under the first section of this act, and
may be compelled to give testimony therein, notwithstanding anything in this act, or in the act last aforesaid.
4. That so much of the seventh section of this act to which this is an addition as may provide for the infliction
of corporal punishment, be and the same is hereby repealed See Hurd's _Law of Freedom and Bondage_, II,
pp. 45-46.]
[Footnote 27: So many Negroes working on the rivers between the slave and free States helped fugitives to
escape that there arose a clamor for the discourage of colored employees.]
[Transcriber's Note: The above should probably be "discouragement of colored employees."]
[Footnote 28: _Constitution of Ohio_, article I, sections 2, 6. _The Journal of Negro History_, I, p. 2.]
[Footnote 29: _Laws of Ohio_, II, p. 53.]
[Footnote 30: _Laws of Ohio_, V, p. 53.]
[Footnote 31: Hitchcock, _The Negro in Ohio_, II, pp. 41, 42.]
[Footnote 32: _Revised Laws of Indiana_, 1831, p. 278.]
[Footnote 33: Perkins, _A Digest of the Declaration of the Supreme Court of Indiana_, p. 590. _Laws of
1853_, p. 60.]
[Footnote 34: Gavin and Hord, _Indiana Revised Statutes_, 1862, p. 452.]
[Footnote 35: _Illinois Statutes_, 1853, sections 1-4, p. 8.]
[Footnote 36: In 1760 there were both African and Pawnee slaves in Detroit, 96 of them in 1773 and 175 in
1782. The usual effort to have slavery legalized was made in 1773. There were seventeen slaves in Detroit in
1810 held by virtue of the exceptions made under the British rule prior to the ratification of Jay's treaty.
Advertisements of runaway slaves appeared in Detroit papers as late as 1827. Furthermore, there were
thirty-two slaves in Michigan in 1830 but by 1836 all had died or had been manumitted See Farmer,
_History of Detroit and Michigan_, I, p. 344.]
[Footnote 37: _Laws of Michigan_, 1827; and Campbell, _Political History of Michigan_, p. 246.]
Part III, chap. i; Hurd, 23
[Footnote 38: _Proceedings of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention_, 1835, p. 19.]
[Footnote 39: _African Repository_, XXIII, p. 70.]
[Footnote 40: _Ohio State Journal_, May 3, 1837.]

close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It was by that time very clear that white men would want to
occupy all lands within the present limits of the United States. Few statesmen dared to encourage migration to
CHAPTER IV 24
Canada because the large number of fugitives who had already escaped there had attached to that region the
stigma of being an asylum for fugitives from the slave States.
The most influential people who gave thought to this question finally decided that the colonization of the
Negro in Africa was the only solution of the problem. The plan of African colonization appealed more
generally to the people of both North and South than the other efforts, which, at best, could do no more than to
offer local or temporary relief. The African colonizationists proceeded on the basis that the Negroes had no
chance for racial development in this country. They could secure no kind of honorable employment, could not
associate with congenial white friends whose minds and pursuits might operate as a stimulus upon their
industry and could not rise to the level of the successful professional or business men found around them. In
short, they must ever be hewers of wood and drawers of water.[2]
To emphasize further the necessity of emigration to Africa the advocates of deportation to foreign soil
generally referred to the condition of the migrating Negroes as a case in evidence. "So long," said one, "as you
must sit, stand, walk, ride, dwell, eat and sleep here and the Negro _there_, he cannot be free in any part of the
country."[3] This idea working through the minds of northern men, who had for years thought merely of the
injustice of slavery, began to change their attitude toward the abolitionists who had never undertaken to solve
the problem of the blacks who were seeking refuge in the North. Many thinkers controlling public opinion
then gave audience to the colonizationists and circles once closed to them were thereafter opened.[4]
There was, therefore, a tendency toward a more systematic effort than had hitherto characterized the
endeavors of the colonizationists. The objects of their philanthropy were not to be stolen away and hurried off
to an uncongenial land for the oppressed. They were in accordance with the exigencies of their new situation
to be prepared by instruction in mechanic arts, agriculture, science and Biblical literature that some might lead
in the higher pursuits and others might skilfully serve their fellows.[5] Private enterprise was at first depended
on to carry out the schemes but it soon became evident that a better method was necessary. Finally out of the
proposals of various thinkers and out of the actual colonization feats of Paul Cuffé, a Negro, came a national
meeting for this purpose, held in Washington, December, 1816, and the organization of the American
Colonization Society. This meeting was attended by some of the most prominent men in the United States,
among whom were Henry Clay, Francis S. Key, Bishop William Meade, John Randolph and Judge Bushrod